All railroad freight cars are required to have at least one hand brake attached thereto on at least one predetermined end of the freight car. Such railroad freight car hand brakes are quite well known in the prior art. For example, there are a number of railroad freight car hand brake manufacturers which include Ellcon-National and Cardwell Westinghouse.
In many cases, the hand brake is usually set and released manually by a person walking along the train consist, or more recently such hand brakes can be attended to from a remote location by a pneumatic or similar mechanism. Currently, a member of the train crew must physically examine and determine that each hand brake is fully released before attempting to move the car.
If, for example, one or more of the hand brakes is not fully released when the train is operated, the wheels of the respective cars whose brakes have not been fully released will not rotate freely as designed, causing unintentional friction between the wheels and the track. When the wheels are not turning they will develop undesirable flat spots. This will ultimately require relatively expensive maintenance and repair and/or replacement of the car wheels and track.